Questions We Are Asked
by Dr. Mary Kay Clark
Director, Seton Home Study School
I have just started home schooling and I feel like I simply cannot get this thing under control.
Home schooling is kind of like getting married. You may go into it thinking that everything is going to work perfectly, but quickly you realize that life is never as idyllic as you dreamt. But just as you would not divorce your spouse after your first argument, you don’t need to stop home schooling after the first trouble appears. What you soon learn, in marriage or home schooling, is that you need to work at it to make it be successful.
Life, ever since The Fall, has been a struggle for everyone. Home schooling is not easy. No one who home schools will tell you it is easy. You are working with children who tend to be unreasonable. Boys especially tend to be difficult if you don’t recognize their need to keep moving. You need to work with them so they can move and learn at the same time. At least give them exercise between classes, such as running upstairs to get the dirty laundry and downstairs to put it in the washing machine.
You need to realize that you are running a little domestic business of schooling and home making. The “little dickens,” as my old grandmother used to say, need to help with the homemaking as well. They need to be given duties to help you around the house. There is no way, absolutely no way, you can do all the housework as well as all the home school work.
Realize that you are not supposed to sit down every day with every child for every subject. You will need to work with your children for a while to find out which child needs you the most in which subjects. A little girl may need you the most for her math, a little boy for his phonics, an older boy for his English compositions, an older girl for her history.
You need to help them get started on their lessons, be sure they understand the directions, and in many cases, simply oversee their learning.
It takes time. Give yourself time to learn more about your children, their strengths and their weaknesses, how they each learn, which child can help another child, which two can work together to clean the dining room, which ones work well in the busy dining room, which ones need absolute quiet in the bedroom.
We recently witnessed the spectacle of the Olympic Games in Beijing. You can be sure that every one of the winning athletes had to struggle to reach that level of achievement. They did not become world-class athletes in a day, a month, or even a year. Their determination, however, carried them through the difficult days.
Life is an adventure. Life in a family is the greatest adventure. It can bring you great happiness as you all learn together and love together and pray together and live the Catholic family life together. And have eternal life together in the world to come.
My daughter is in 10th grade, and she needs to do several book reports or book analyses for two courses. She feels it is too much reading and writing.
Please explain to your daughter that reading and writing are the best ways to get an education. We read, we learn, then we write what we have learned in our own words to make sure we have in fact learned it.
If she has three books to read for her book analyses in English 10, remember she is reading only one book per nine weeks. Most of the books, which are fiction, should be read in only two or three weeks. In fact, if she reads a novel longer than over three or four weeks, she is likely to forget the first part of the book by the time she gets to the end of the book.
The novels being read for the Literature course can be read anytime during the course, so she can read the book for one course in the first half of the nine-week quarter, and the second book for the second course in the second half of the nine-week quarter. These books should be read outside of normal class time.
Remember that all the books being read for a book report or book analysis have chapter notes on the Seton web site. Chapter by chapter, our teachers help the students to think about what they are reading and to analyze the character development based on what the character said, what he did, what he thought, what other characters thought about him, and so on.
A third book is being read during two quarters of English 10, but these are read chapter by chapter along with discussion questions for motivation and analysis of character, plot, and theme. They are not difficult books to read, but are good books for analyzing character, plot, and theme.
If your daughter started with Seton in high school, you might consider ordering the Seton Grade 8 text-workbook, Reading 8 for Young Catholics, Thinking Skills. It gives step-by-step instructions for analyzing short stories. Look on our Web site under Book Catalog and order it from our SEM department.
But is it really necessary to read all these books?
This question is often asked. We are in an electronically immersed culture at this point in history. We have television and DVDs and Internet and movies even via our computers. Even the telephone has become a mini-computer and mini-movie player!
Despite the prevalence of video in the modern world, words still have important meaning for us. The novels and biographies of saints that we ask the students to read and think about have messages for all of us through the experiences of the characters. When reading a book, we can read slowly or quickly as we take the time we need, as individuals, to think over a phrase or a situation.
Movies and action on television or computers or DVDs keep moving, without giving us a chance to think about it, to absorb it, to conclude from a scene or an event. I notice that sometimes in a mystery movie, the detective goes back and repeats something for us because in the rush of the moving picture, we may not have noticed an important clue.
With a book, we can take our time and proceed at the pace that is best for us to learn and to remember and to appreciate. It is sometimes said that books are on their way out, to be replaced exclusively by multimedia presentations. The fact is, whatever new technology comes along, books are a fantastic technology. Reading is a great way to learn, and we think that books will be around as long as human beings are on this earth.
My son seems to be taking too much time with his Algebra. How much time each day is reasonable ?
Our math counselor wrote the following answer: Recall your own days in high school math classes and the homework you had to complete once you came home from school. The classes usually lasted about 50 minutes and the homework took about that long also. One lesson was studied per day and the next day, the class moved on to the next lesson.
Math textbooks were written with this schoolwork/homework template in mind. Saxon textbooks are no different. With all this in mind and adapting to the home environment, experience has shown that it is advisable that two math periods per day be scheduled, one in the morning and one in the afternoon or evening, focusing on only one lesson per day.
Each study period should be about 50 minutes since experience has demonstrated that to go beyond 50-60 minutes in one session is counterproductive. In the first period, the student should read and learn the lesson, and then begin work on the Practice problems and Problem Set problems until the 50 minutes are up. For the afternoon or evening session, the student should continue where he left off.
As you ease into this system, evaluate just how much work the student is able to accomplish in the two sessions. If you find that he simply is not able to complete all the Practice problems and the Problem Set problems in the time allotted, consider reducing the number of Problem Set problems from 30 to 20 to keep to a realistic scheduling goal of one lesson per day. If you decide to reduce the number of problems, be sure to stagger the problems worked and skipped with each lesson to insure the student is exposed to all types of stylized problems.
In all this, remember that the more problems the student works, the more thoroughly he will learn his math.
I am having a hard time keeping organized.
The first thing to tell yourself is that it can be done. You can be organized, you can be in control, your house can be a pleasant place in which to live. However, you also need to realize that it takes work and time and help from other members of the family.
Running a busy home is like running a small business. You need to have a schedule for yourself, and you need to have a schedule for the children. When I wrote the home schooling schedule for my children, between the academics I scheduled chores. My boys liked to keep moving, and they actually looked forward to the activity. You will be surprised how much your children will enjoy the break by sweeping or vacuuming or taking out the trash or straightening up the dining room or picking up the toys from the playroom, or folding the laundry, or cleaning the bathroom sink. You will have an easier time of it if you schedule it during the school day rather than scheduling it after the classes or on Saturday.
Another trick for keeping organized is to throw out things. The fewer things you have to clean and dust and move around, the better off you will be. About twice a year, have a throw-away and give-away day. We all have too much. One thing I liked about my boys is that they liked to wear the same clothes; they were never pressing me to buy them more clothes.
Keep your books organized, like in a library, subject by subject. We home schooling families have lots of books (I hope), but they are useless if you can’t find them. Teach your children the system used at the public library. You can get a chart from your local library or on the Internet about the Library of Congress system. Have your children look on the chart, make the labels, and put the little labels with the LC numbers on the spines of the books. (There are many software packages available to help you catalog your books.) Once they do that, they will be proud to put the books in their proper place. Of course, for the regular daily school books, each student should have his own bookcase or shelves.